Title: Broken Wings, Broken Spirits
Author: JohnDarkblaze15
Amount read: All
Genre Tags: MLP: FiM, Sad, Slice of Life, Tragedy, OC, Other
Verdict: 5/10 Reject

John Darkblaze suffers a fatal injury, sending him into a depressive episode. But with the help of a new friend, he overcomes his injury.

Hi again! Good to see you submit again, I saw your fic there and I may have gotten violent in my attempt to claim it. If the police haul me to jail at least I would have gone doing something I loved.
Speaking of, I’m trying to incorporate a bit more personality and humour, because reading reviews that are lifeless is dryer than licking sand. Sorry in advance for the terrible humour, I got it from OkemosBrony. Now, having just insulted my boss;

Firstly, I want to say that you shouldn’t even look at the score. The score is irrelevant because according to it, you haven’t improved at all, which is the biggest stinking heap that I could ever procure. Since I last reviewed your stories, you seemed to have had an issue with tense which you totally fixed in this fic. I wouldn’t have even thought I was reading the same author.

Throughout my time doing this, I’ve kind of found writers that are just starting off to go through levels. These levels kind of represent different pitfalls and issues that surround authors of different skill. The basic ones being narrative structure, perspective, grammar, and sentence structure. As authors improve and naturally don’t make those kinds of mistakes anymore, they start to focus on improving and refining more complex principles, things like prose, pacing, voice, narration style, evocative language, etc. Last time I reviewed you, we talked about more of the basic-y issues that are quite common pitfalls for newer writers. Now, we’re gonna be stepping it up a notch. You’ve conquered those first two hills, and whilst these ideas seem super scary, there’s plenty of stuff on them.

Having issues with word count? Noticing other author’s chapters are in the thousands whilst you struggle to get over 1500? That’s okay! It’s a tough nut to crack, I noticed your chapters are quite short and there is a reason for this, pacing! It’s as good as any spot to start so let’s crack into this almond shall we? (no? Imma stop :x)

Pacing is something that is tricky to master, but once you have it, you have it. You have scenes, and you have action, but where they are, who is in these scenes and what they do is quite limited. You get straight into the reason why that scene is there, and the action happening in the scene without really adding any more information. Let’s get an excerpt from the first scene of your story, and compare it to the start of a scene from one of mine because they’re both first person, I gotta practice what I preach... and it’s too late in the night to ask anyone to borrow their story.

“Wow John,” Jacob said, stretching his wings out, “You’re the only colt I know of that can out-pace me in a race and not even break a sweat.”

“What can I say?” I replied coolly, “I must be a natural or something.”

“Har har,” he chuckled, “Spare me your over-inflated ego and listen up. I dare you to a rematch – here to the weather factory, winner takes all!”

“Hm, are you sure?” I asked, expressing mild concern. My parents usually didn’t like when I ventured too far beyond the neighborhood, and the weather factory was almost on the other side of Cloudsdale! But I also didn’t want to give Jacob the satisfaction of forfeiting, as I almost never backed down from a challenge – especially one that I could win.

“What, you too scared of Mommy and Daddy?” he teased.

“In your dreams!” I retorted, “You’re on!” So, once we lined up at the end of his sidewalk, we took off into the sky yet again. We switched back and forth between taking over the lead and falling behind, but remained relatively neck-and-neck all the way to the factory. Just before we crossed over the border fence, signaling the end of our race, I found my second wind and soared past Jacob to win the race! He slowed down as we cross over, but I continue zipping around, relishing in my victory.

You’ve said everything you want to say in 250ish words. In the interest of saving time I’m just going to quote a part of the start of my fic.

“I sat there. politely, comfortably, unassumingly… I sat there with my best friend as we laughed and talked while eating dinner together. In the middle of the restaurant, it was nothing out of the ordinary or overly complex in the minds of everyone within visible range of our table. Just two friends eating dinner after a day of doing whatever they did. Just friends, buddies. Nothing to examine or look too closely at. I just kept telling myself that this is what the ponies around us thought, since they had reason to believe that and only that. That was all there was to it. That’s what my dad would have believed, I thought to myself.

Except… that wasn’t quite the case.

He laughed and smiled along with me. He gave me a warm grin and acted polite whilst I went on and on about the socio-political background of some new antique Starlight Glimmer’s dad had shown me. He couldn’t have cared less, but he sat there, still smiling. My boyfriend.

It’s… still a bit weird to say. It wouldn’t be lying to say he was my best friend, because he is. But he is so much more than that as well. He sat opposite of me, plunging his fork into the leafy greens he had in front of himself, sitting crossed legged, and folding his hooves in that stereotypically… colourful way. I couldn’t help but notice the way his posture presented his image, leaving possible hints for the skeptical ponies around us, even if that was ridiculous. I scooped up my own food, the fork fastened in my aura as I let whatever I was chewing on desperately try to fill the giant, fluttery, fearsome hole in my stomach.

This entire scene that pans out, goes for over 2000 words. It’s about doing so much more than just telling the story. It’s about creating a feeling, communicating that to the audience, and dissecting things in order to bring out that feeling. I go into detail about the way that Flash Sentry sits, later I talk about the feeling Sunburst get’s sitting in an empty square, just contemplating his feeling and discussing why he felt so empty, tying it back to the square. Truly envision being there, at the start of your story, seeing your friend, banter and chatter, how the day was, where they had met. Don’t be afraid to describe the scene! This issue with word count and pacing also ties into my next point… dun DUN DUN… showing and telling.

Huh, did you just hear the gasp of millions of authors dead and alive? Showing and telling is a complex rule, and notoriously difficult to grasp. There are people who explain it a lot better than me, but basically, show and telling is the name given to the two fundamentals of writing.

Tell is like the narrative structure. It’s backbone, it’s a skeleton. “Ted bought apple.” “The old man sat down and was sad.” “I raced my friend to the old weather factory.” This stuff is great and all… but it’s so… damned… dull. What’s a story filled with tell? A recount, and-

Thanks, Sweet Brown (I know it’s dead I STILL LIKE IT). Now I’m not saying you’re all tell, because you aren’t, and it’s still very much readable and entertaining, it’s just not as elevated.

Now, think of show like a casserole, the tell is the nice, bulky meat and veg that is there as the base. Then show is the spice, the flavour! The ESSENCE~!

Let’s take that example before: “The old man sat down and was sad,” and use show to give it flavour. “He sighed, and slowly bent over his rocking chair. He grimaced before crashing down into the soft sagging cushion. A frown spread through his tired, wrinkled brow as he rested his elbows on his baggy, beige golfing pants. He sighed, leaning back and letting the quiet house engulf his thoughts as he felt the emptiness sweep over him.”

That’s huge! And it’s literally saying the EXACT same thing, and it’s so much more interesting than “he sat on the chair and was sad.” You can really see what is going on, and capture an image. Show is characterised as description, action, and dialogue. These are your tools for crafting a really great story. But you still need tell! Because otherwise the audience gets tired and you have the opposite problem of having too much. Practice makes perfect and you’ll only get better the more you practice show and tell. I still recommend checking out some writers sites and discussions on this because there are better ways of explaining it.

As I said, it’s fantastic that you look past your mistakes and fix them, you grow as a writer and I see improvement every time a new story comes out. Never stop learning and growing, I don’t! And don’t be scared of the score, because if you keep working hard on these things I can guarantee that it will improve as you do. These things naturally become easier.

I also recommend you have a look into finding an editor, there are plenty of pages for finding them, even if it’s just a friend having a look over because I notice some grammar and punctuation errors. They’re vital! Because there is no way you are gonna find everything.

Alright! I’m gonna wrap up this already huge review. Goodluck! And I sincerely hope, once again, you continue to put your stories here! I love reading your stuff and reviewing them even more. Good luck out there!

-Milo  

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Speaking of, I’m trying to incorporate a bit more personality and humour, because reading reviews that are lifeless is dryer than licking sand.

You did a fantastic job, then! I suppose that showing and telling rule applies to more than just stories, Milo.

Speaking of showing and telling, I'm glad you specifically called it showing and telling as opposed to showing vs telling; the distinction, while small, carries a far less aggressively black and white connotation and encourages the thought of using both to elevate a story as opposed to disrupting the writing process by doggedly clinging to one school of thought.

This entire scene that pans out, goes for over 2000 words. It’s about doing so much more than just telling the story. It’s about creating a feeling, communicating that to the audience, and dissecting things in order to bring out that feeling... Truly envision being there, at the start of your story, seeing your friend, banter and chatter, how the day was, where they had met. Don’t be afraid to describe the scene!

I struggle with the issue of making scenes too short myself, so I appreciate the advice here. Kudos to the author for improving and good on you for the review, Milo!

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Thank you so much! I'm so glad you caught that little thing with Showing and Telling because it's so important not to completely throw tell out the window. Thank you so much and I'm so glad you could get something out of this review despite it not being your own. Thank you so much for the feedback! It really means a lot

Thank you once again for taking the time to review another one of my stories, I truly appreciate the feedback! The inclusion of more humor in this review was a welcome one, and I hope it is something that you continue to exploit. I feel like it is something that helps to slightly lighten the tone of the review itself, which I know can seem a bit intimidating for first-time users such as myself! ;-) (also, I apologize in advance for the length of this response)

As for the points you've mentioned, I see now what exactly you were talking about with regards to my pacing. In hindsight, I've always kind of held back with my stories because I'd be afraid that if I made it too long, then nobody would be willing to read it at all. But you've once again opened my mind to the things that make good writers great, and I cannot wait to begin implementing them into existing and future stories on this site!

Another issue that I've had before, and is something that affects my pacing issues, is based around how I portray the characters in my stories. I've always felt like the majority of people have a certain mindset of how they want certain characters portrayed, and I'm afraid that, if I deviate too much from these preconceived mindsets, then people will not want to read the story, so I kind of shy away from expanding more on the characters other than what we already know from the show. On the contrary, with regards to my OC stories, such as this one, I can mentally picture what each character is thinking and how their actions affect their thinking, but I've never felt like information like that would be that vital to the story. These are both things that I definitely need to overcome if I'm going to get any better on this site.

Again, I apologize for the wordy response, but I feel that if someone is going to take the time out of their day to review one of my stories, then they deserve some damn good feedback! Happy writing to you, good sir, and hope to hear from you again soon!

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I hope you know that insult will come out of your Christmas bonus.

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0 x 1000000 = 0

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And don't you forget it!